


To Tell the Truth  (Or: Five Ways Genderswapping Billy and Joe Might or Might Not Change Their Story)

by deborah_judge



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: AU, F/F, Genderbending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-22
Updated: 2011-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonight they're going to do something they've never ever done before: they're going to tell the fucking truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Tell the Truth  (Or: Five Ways Genderswapping Billy and Joe Might or Might Not Change Their Story)

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: To Tell the Truth (Or: Five Ways Genderswapping Billy and Joe Might or Might Not Change Their Story)  
> Fandom: Hard Core Logo  
> Pairing: Billy/Joe (Billie/Jo)  
> Betareader: , full of \o/, who smote many bungled transitions and pushed me to think through my story on a deeper level than I otherwise would've.  
> Rating: R for language and sex  
> Warnings: Possibly triggery stuff related to pregnancy, also canon violence, references to rape and dubcon. If you haven't seen HCL you may be surprised at how often they use the word 'fuck'. Also, if you genderbend misogyny you get misandry, so there's some of that here as well.  
> Summary: Tonight they're going to do something they've never ever done before: they're going to tell the fucking truth.

1\. Performance

Last time Jo pissed on stage it was in New York, when Seymour Stein thought he was going to sign them for a fucking corporate contract. She pissed right on him, right in his gin and tonic, right on his money-loving out-selling artist-destroying soul-fucking machine. Tonight she thinks she'll maybe fucking do it again. The crowd thinks they're there for a renuion, something nice and safe and old. That's not what Jo's here for, not why she hauled Billie all the way up from LA with that made-up story about Bucky and and a fundraiser. She's here to tell the fucking truth, and sometimes you have to piss on an audience until they'll hear it.

Seymour Stein didn't get that, that's why he had that piss coming. He had these long-ass fucked-up lists of things audiences like to see from girl bands: tight dresses, lots of pretty, a little bit of attitude, a little bit of sass, a lot of flirting. Maybe some girl-on-girl kisses that the boner-broken middle-aged-dads could enjoy. Things that audiences didn't like to see: girls punching like they mean it, girls spitting like they can, girls shooting coke just for the thrill of it, girls cursing because it's the only way to say something true and not caring at all if they're pretty, girls fighting like a white-trash couple because, fuck, that's what they are. Oh, and pissing.

That's not why Billie left, not the only reason, but it didn't help. She loves Jo's bad-girl act, drinks it in, always has, even though Billie of everyone should know just how much of an act it's not. But she doesn't piss on audiences and doesn't piss on managers, not so that it gets in the way of the music.

Five years later, though, Billie's back, and once again they've got an audience. Jo curses the audience and they take it, they bend over and let her fuck them, they are her bitch. They want to see pretty girls on stage, but Jo's going to be something else, with her mohawk and black sweater and gum that she's cracking like a teenybopper. If they want pretty they can look at Billie, skinny and spiky-blonde and fucking beautiful enough for all of them. Billie's in the corner dangling a cigarette from her mouth and Jo can't help it, she's got to kiss her on the cheek. And then Billie starts playing. And, fuck, Billie can play the guitar and make it sound like anything. Today it sounds like longing, and maybe just a little a bit like joy. And Jo knows, this is truth, it's fucking real. Billie could own her just for this, just for the music that comes out of her fucking guitar, the music they're going to make together. Tonight that's going to be worth all the lies it took to get here.

2\. Time Travel

Before they fucked they fought. Punches and brawls in schoolyards, in alleys, in Jo's parents' basement when Jo told Billie her guitar playing wasn't fucking real. Girls didn't fight but Billie did, if she hadn't had to learn from the hellhole she was raised in her time in juvie would have taught her. When Billie was drunk she told gleeful stories about breaking bones of boys who deserved it but didn't want to explain why. "Five of them at once," Billie said one time when she was so wasted she could barely talk. "In and out like a fucking piston." Jo didn't ask again, she just let Billie get the first hit when she woke up the next morning sick and angry. Jo had a mean punch herself and hanging with Billie just made it better. She'd knock down any boy who tried to mess with either of them, and she only ever fought dirty.

They started fucking when Jo was seventeen. Billie was stoned on weed, backed up against a tree, and Jo had one hand up Billie's shirt and one down her pants before Billie knew what was happening. She didn't seem to mind, though. Her breath fluttered as Jo's fingers moved but Billie didn't smile. Jo had fucked people before, Serena with the big boobs and tight little Patricia and of course boys were easy, but nothing had prepared her for this, for the way Billie just looked at her, eyes open, pupils dark, like she was going to strip bare everything Jo had ever been and own her fucking soul. It felt like months before Billie gave it back to her, kneeling in the gravel while Jo bent back over the hood of her car parked at the end of a dirt road under a clump of trees. Billie's fingers were rough and calloused but her tongue was sweet and Jo came so hard she shook the car under her and fuck if the world didn't seem like a good and happy place for once since it had been created.

They scrambled their way downhill afterwards to the harbour. Billie lifted a fudgesicle from a street vendor and they licked it at each other messily. Then they dangled their legs over the edge of a pier, watched paddle-boats go by and shared their last cigarette. Jo took a deep puff and blew the smoke down Billie's neck, wrapped her arm around Billie and skipped her fingers down the side of her ribs. "Dink," Billie said, squirming away. "Not here." Fine then, Jo thought, if that's how it has to be. Innuendo, fine, flirting, fine, the knowledge that Billie belongs to Jo like wood belongs to fire, well, that they can keep to themselves.

Fast-forward five years and they're in their apartment - Billie's apartment, really, although Jo doesn't have another place and hasn't slept anywhere else in a month. Billie's playing her guitar and it sounds like sex, all choppy and breathless and languid. She's slipped back on her too-tight jeans but hasn't bothered with her shirt. Jo's come twice for her already that day but she knows if Billie so much as touches her with one little finger she'll just give it up again. Jo's papers are scattered around, over and under their unmade bed, mixed up with the dishes and the clothes on the floor. She pieces them together trying to find some combination of words, she knows 'Rock and roll is fat and ugly' is a great beginning but isn't quite sure what comes next, but she's just going to keep working at it until she finds something to say that's true. For Billie truth is easy, or feels easy, she just keeps playing and it's just notes and fingers but it's so fucking real Jo wants to come and shout and cry all at once. For Jo it's hard, she doesn't know how to get real music from this mess, but she's going to fucking get there, that's what it's about, that's what it's all fucking _for_.

Billie pauses mid-note, freezes, and it's time-travel to now and the bar where they're drinking ridiculous girly drinks with umbrellas. "No staying in the vans," Billie's laying down her conditions, "you book hotels, and we don't stay at any band houses." It doesn't matter. She said she'll go. Jo slips her hand under the table, lets one finger trawl up the inside of Billie's leg. Listens to Billie rattle on about how it's going to be over after this one tour. It's all bullshit, all the scowling and swearing and conditions and Billie thinking for a single fucking minute that she owns herself and won't come running whenever Jo wants her, because Jo's hand is nearing Billie's crotch and Billie's not pulling away. This time-travel thing works pretty well after all.

 

3\. Nobody's Mother

Mark comes sauntering in like he thinks he's a knight in fucking shining armour. To both of them. With a wife in tow, no less. Billie pulls Mark aside, tries to make with him, but he pulls back. Jane told him something, delerious, her meds long gone. What was it? It's easy enough to guess. Something about that night, whatever Jane knows or thinks she knows.

There's a child with him, five years old, a handsome little boy.

Mark says his name is Billy.

Fuck.

*

Six years ago Mark had been just one of the boys they played with after shows. Jo had never been one for the worshipping of the Almighty Cock, but a fuck was as good as a vibrator when she was amped from adrenaline and coke, and besides getting fucked gave her something to do as she watched Billie, golden and beautiful, pumping herself senseless on one of her desperately pretty boys. And oh, she always liked them pretty, male-model types, and she rode them and swayed on them and it looked like the best kind of dancing. Billie fucked Mark on the sofa in their dressing room. Jo fucked Mark outside against the wall and licked Billie's sweat off his neck.

Condoms are great when they don't break. The Pill is great when you're not too fucked up to remember to take it. It took months before Jo noticed that her missing periods weren't just about the crack and the weed and the stress of the tour. It was 1990, and just because abortions had been legal for a whole fucking year in Canada that didn't mean you could just fucking _get_ one. So Jo ate lots of doughnuts, wore corsets and cracked-out poufy skirts, and called it an attitude. The puking made it hard to keep down any booze but there was still coke and weed. Once she nearly showed her belly on stage, that would've given them something to remember, but, well, an audience can only take so much reality.

Billie didn't say anything. Not until Jo got amped up on coke after a concert in Regina and felt herself contracting, a good two weeks before she thought she was due. "It's fucking appendicitis," Billie said, and rushed her off to the hospital before anyone could even think to ask what made her so sure that's what it was. Jo tried not to remember what happened next, the pushing and the pain, and at least the motherfuckers in the hospital were decent enough to knock her out towards the end, and when she woke up Billie was still with her.

"You ok?" Billie asked.

Jo nodded. "Where's the kid?"

"I let them take him," Billie said. "That's what you wanted, right?"

Of course it was. They had no money, no plans beyond the next concert, and Jo had probably gone into labour early because she had forgotten to eat anything but doughnuts for most of the previous week. "Thanks," Jo said. "Did you give him a name?"

"You did." Billie's expression was unreadable. "You called him Billy." Jo must've been pretty fucked up, she didn't remember that at all. She hoped it was okay and that Billie wouldn't bitch-slap her for it once they were out of the hospital. Billie's hand drifted to Jo's still-aching abdomen. "I was worried about you," she said.

It wasn't the kind of thing Billie said, and it made Jo feel all warm inside. She drifted off holding Billie's hand and when she woke up Billie was asleep on her chest. And maybe it was mommy-hormones or maybe the drugs they had given her were even better than what she had been getting on her own, or maybe Billie when she was worried was even more beautiful than she always was, and when she blearily opened her eyes Jo thought she saw something like tenderness, and fuck if that wasn't worth it all.

"I'm going to fucking Boston marry you," Jo said. "One day. I'm going to be your fucking unlawfully unwedded wife, and we're going to have another child, and it's going to be ours. You think that's gonna happen one day, Billie?"

"It just might," Billie said. "It just might."

On their way out Jo pocketed some morphene and vicodin and anything else that looked shiny. Whatever it was had seemed to work. Billie took her back to the hotel room they were sharing with Pipe and Jane. Pipe was aready asleep but Billie just glared at Jane, glared so hard Jane didn't say anything when Billie took Jo into her own bed and held her all night like it was the most normal thing in the whole fucking world.

Jo woke up to the sound of the toilet flushing, over and over. Saw Billie methodically cracking envelopes full of weed and and pouring them down the john. "Bitch," Jo said. "What the fuck? You can't do that."

"I can't?" Billie said. She picked up a glass vial full of while powder, dropped it and let it shatter on the floor. "Fuck this."

And fuck, Jo needed that, her sides still hurt and she needed a hit to get her through the concert. "You don't have the right," she said, "just because we're fucking." The whole band was awake, everyone was listening. "Just 'cause I fucked you, that doesn't give you the right. You're not my fucking mother."

Billie smiled that awful smile, the one that said nothing more warm than 'you lose,' and before the words came out Jo knew just what was happening. "You're right," Billie said. "I'm nobody's mother."

And, fuck, that wasn't right, it could've just as easily been Billie giving birth in that hospital if it weren't for her magical powers of Not Fucking Up that somehow kept her condoms from breaking, and she just stood there judgemental as fuck, like she thinks she has a right to flush Jo's stash for something that wasn't even her fault, like she made her own fucking condoms break, and before Jo knew it she was grabbing Billie, punching her, and Billie was fighting back, punching hard. Jane tried to separate them, Pipe just called security, no one got worse than a black eye but there was no way they were going to play that afternoon, and there was no way Jo was speaking to that little snit Billie ever again, or at least not until the next morning. But by that time Billie had taken her guitar with her and was already gone.

*

The little boy's name is Billy, and looking at him is like looking in a genderbent age-shrunk fucking mirror. He's got dark hair like Jo's and Jo's big round blue eyes and he's exactly the right age and he holds on to Mark's hand like there's no one he'd rather be with. It takes a special kind of fan to go track down and adopt your child, even if, Jo supposes, it was probably also his. Jo wonders what Mark thought he was going to get from her, or from Billie, or from both of them: praise, love, gratitude, more sex that he doesn't have to tell his wife about. Mark's wife Eve seems like a nice lady, probably a lawyer or something, and Jo represses an impulse to ask her if Mark still does that thing with his tongue. Billy's got a good home, it seems, and seems to have come out better than Jo could have expected. She gives little Billy a T-shirt and hopes he'll keep it.

4\. The Shot

The stage is trashed, the concert's done. There's a gun in Jo's pocket and she knows what it's for. One last shot and salud. It's not like she's got any reason to keep living, with Billie gone. Bruce is filming, he'd love to get this on camera, Jo's last grand fuck-you goodbye to the universe.

Except, no, what the hell. Suicidal, cracked out lesbos? What a fucking cliche.

Jo thinks she hears Billie playing in the distance. She probably bummed another guitar after Jo trashed hers on stage. Anyone would give one to her, all it would take is one of Billie's patented smiles. But she's playing, and it sounds like rage and fear and love and hope and it sounds like _survival_. And Jo might be a washup and a fuckup, she knows she is. But Billie? Billie's a fucking genius.

Jo's not going to kill herself for a fucking shit movie. Dead dykes are old, they've been done to death, they're boring, Thelma and Louise has already been made and if Jo's got any truth left in her to tell that's sure as fuck not going to be it. Still, she's got a gun in her pocket, she might as well use it. One shot is all it takes to shatter the lens of the camera.

"Guess you're not going to be able to film your fucking bullshit boring ending after all," Jo says, smirking at the broken camera. "Good thing I already gave you a better one."

5\. To Tell the Fucking Truth

It's the last concert of the tour, and it's brilliant, but Jo's saved the most brilliant part for the end. Jo knows she's a fuckup, and she's not good for much, but she does know how to put on a good performance. It'll be a surprise for Billie, but Jo knows how she'll respond, knows like the sweet taste of Billie's clit that she'll fight back when Jo hits her, that she'll punch when Jo punches her, and that she won't leave until Jo smashes her precious guitar.

And oh, Billie's got this coming, all those lies about staying and music and another tour and more albums and not going after all. Letting her think she was staying when she was already gone. Holding out everything Jo ever wanted and then just fucking taking it away. Tonight there will be no lines left to cross, 'cause there's nothing she's fucking got left to lose.

It's all planned, Jo's not much for planning but she sat down with Pipe and Jane last night and planned it out. This will be big, nasty and bad like Jo knows how to be, and Billie will love it and hate it and drink it in like a fucking addict. Edmonton will love it too, and not just Edmonton, because that big asshole Bruce is going to film it and show it and people will know Hard Core Logo and they'll be the biggest thing ever, so much bigger than Jenifur. Billie will come crawling back on her pretty little knees, and, Jo, 'cause she's generous that way, will give her everything she is like she always does. Because tonight they're going to do something they've never ever done before: they're going to tell the fucking truth.

And it's about rage, and it's about need, and it's about what you do when someone is your world but you don't know how to be together and in any case maybe the world won't even let you. It's about spit and bodies and punches and fucks and coke and booze. It's about lies you tell to live and the truth you tell when everything ends and it's not pretty at all and tonight they're going to show what it looks like.

Jo's planned this with Pipe and Jane, they've got it down. It'll be their last big performance. Jane knows her lines, and if she wants to strip down to her bra and panties while saying them, well, everyone's got to do what they've got to do. Everyone's got their own story to tell.

"It's not just the end of the tour," Jo says. "It's the end of Billie Tallent's fucking life."

*

And in the end, it's love.


End file.
